DestroyerUp+Dt Festival, Edmonton AB, October 5

The capacity crowd seemed more determined to enjoy themselves than Destroyer's Dan Bejar as he took the stage for a solo appearance at Up+Dt festival in Edmonton. An off-mic but audible "Fuck it, we'll start even though people are talking," and a new song cast an inconsistent mood that would carry through the entire show.

Following the first song he turned around on the crowd though, opting not to bite the hands that were enthusiastically clapping offering, "I'm very happy to be here tonight," then adding "I don't always say that." To be fair the dull, persistent roar of the back half of the room was overbearing.

Without any coherent stage lights, armed with nothing more than a guitar and his un-place-able vocal affectation, he captured the entire crowd by his third song, "Watercolours into the Ocean." But then a joke about Alberta-British Columbia relations mid-way through the set didn't land and as he strummed the last chords of "What Road" he'd lost the back of the room entirely to chatter.

By the time Bejar closed his set with "Don't Become the Thing You Hate," he seemed more than happy to step away from the appreciative front of the room and join the loud hum of the party in the back.